Demon Possession - Brief History

 

William Friedkin’s 1973 movie The Exorcist brought demon possession to the big screen and sparked heated debate, particularly within the Catholic Church which strongly advised Catholics to boycott the film. Based on William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel of the same name, the movie purported to recount a story that was, ostensibly, based on an actual case of demonic possession and exorcism. Blatty’s “demon” was hardly the somewhat capricious demon in C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, who doesn’t possess his victim but works to undermine personal faith. Both examples, however, highlight the preoccupation with demons and other spirit beings in terms of human relationships, often with inappropriate consequences.

 

Demon Possession and Mental Disorders

 

Both the Catholic Church and numerous evangelical Protestant denominations still hold to a firm belief in demonology and demonic possession. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, this belief is rooted in church doctrine. All too often, however, demonic possession is used to explain psychological conditions that have nothing whatsoever to do with notions of demonic possession. This applies to Personality Disorders, and especially sufferers of Bipolar Disorder and, broadly, schizophrenia.

 

Equating mental disorders with demonic influence can be traced back to the 1509 publication of the Malleus maleficarum by Heinrich Institoris and Jacob Sprenger. Linking witchcraft with demonic activity, the Malleus merged long held distinctions between insanity (going back to Roman law) and demonic possession. To a certain extent, all manner of “evil supernatural figures,” such as ghosts and demons, we taught to be part of a pantheon of malevolent beings tied to the devil. This had been a belief of the Christian Church for centuries.

 

But the Church, prior to the Malleus, had accepted insanity as a viable distinction, taking their cue in Canon Law from Roman law. Every soul was consigned to a specific place within the cosmology of the church. Hence, demons and even ghosts could not possibly be confused with human souls. This thinking would change during the Sixteenth Century as scholars began to differentiate between the so-called crime of witchcraft (and concurrently, possession) and insanity.

 

The Protestant Reformation and the Rise of Pre-Modern Thinking

 

By the mid-sixteenth century, European scholars were slowly revising their views on witchcraft and demonic possession. According to historian H. C. Erik Midelfort, “The theories of melancholy and of hallucinatory drugs…gave sixteenth-century Europeans a plausible and entirely natural way of explaining the apparently voluntary confessions made by those convicted of witchcraft.” Midelfort argues that the voluminous works of Johann Weyer succeeded in producing a renewed distinction between witchcraft, possession, and a legitimate case of insanity as a legal defense.

 

Even the Catholic Encyclopedia concedes that various New Testament usages of the word describing those that were demon possessed (demoniacs) are best translated as “mad” or “madness.” Cases of those afflicted in the New Testament usually refer to “unclean spirits.” There is no direct relation to “possession.” Once freed of the “spirits,” the afflicted regained their senses. It was the early Christian Church and the Fathers of the church that gave ideological meaning to such experiences: Tertullian, for example, states that all “unclean spirits” had to be demons.

 

Clarity and Rationalism in Defining Disorders

 

The suggestion that a Personality Disorder, or even depression and anxiety are the result of demonic possession is disingenuous and may even be criminal. Although exorcism might serve as a form of therapy, it is important to move from medieval notions and embrace rational therapies for clearly defined and documented mental disorders. People that shout blasphemies may not be demon possessed, but may suffer from OCD or some other psychological disorder.

 

Sources:

 

H. C. Erik Midelfort, “Johann Weyer and the Transformation of the Insanity Defense,” The German People and the Reformation, Edited by R. Po-Chia Hsia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).

Daniel Ogden, Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Oxford University Press, 2002).

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